Guy Baron is an academic and a singer-producer working under the name Semi Precious. His musical practice fuses electronic music production and songwriting to explore notions of bedroom production and hauntology, with previous musical works being endorsed by The Sunday Times (‘real emotional depth’), The Guardian (‘subtly dislocating beauty’) and i-D (‘celestial pop suspending and spinning in a dark and lonely bedroom’). Baron serves as a lecturer of music production at Goldsmiths University, as well as leading practice-based modules at London South Bank University. His doctoral research focused on aspects of reminiscing and retrospection in the context of electronic music making.
Reflections on Bedroom Production Aesthetics
I recorded this EP, titled Sun is Out, over a year during which I worked from a new studio. The space lacked the features of a professional recording studio: it contained a rudimentary monitors-interface-laptop setup, which I used previously when recording in my bedroom, and its acoustic treatment was practically non-existent. I populated the space with eclectic bits of furniture, in such a way that made it look more like a cosy bedroom – effectively prioritising good feng shui over acoustic considerations.
When working on the music, it was important for me to be able to sketch ideas quickly and to not get caught up in overthinking compositional structures and sounds design details. I used my iPhone extensively throughout the recording process, specifically for recording vocals with the Voice Memos app. In a track titled ‘Queen Aquamarine’, I used the app to capture the speaker of an old Yamaha keyboard I found in a room I was staying in during a trip. In another track named ‘The Weight’, I used the iPhone to record my old, out-of-tune piano, which I then processed in Ableton Live.
In tracks like ‘Swim in the Morning’ and the title cut ‘Sun is Out’, I layered instrumental samples alongside my recorded vocals. I developed this method of working when I first started producing my own music, partly because I like the idea of collaging random samples but also as I didn’t have access to and/or substantial abilities in playing musical instruments other than a laptop. However, in this EP, I employed sampling differently to how I used it previously, allowing myself to place samples in free time and without fixing and aligning them to a given tempo. I also embraced headphone playback leakage from vocal recording sessions, as captured using my iPhone, as opposed to trying to isolate the vocal takes.
I was searching for a sense of imperfection and looseness when working on this collection of recordings and further inspired by the notion of “availablism” – a term I was initially introduced to by my former art school tutor. Originally coined by performance artist Kembra Pfahler, the term refers to the act of being creatively resourceful and “celebrating abundance” with whichever resources that are available at hand (Dempsey, 2014). In this case, it was the relatively minimalist setup and the so-called non-professional, everyday recording devices used that helped me to unlock creative ideas. For me, the notion of availablism and the aesthetic ethos of bedroom production go hand in hand in that both ideas regard seemingly amateurish and limited-resources spaces as prolific sites of creative making.
Sun is Out was further inspired by a quest for an intimate sound. I used recording techniques like close miking, for example, to suggest a sense of closeness, whilst embracing unedited, one-take recordings and stripped-down arrangements in attempt to convey directness and exposedness. It can also be said the use of the iPhone – an arguably highly personal object used daily for different forms of self-documentation – makes the recordings even more so intimate. I have not only explored notions of intimacy in the production of the EP, but also through employing certain songwriting strategies: using a dream-diary to piece together fragments of dreams as private and subconscious lyrical “samples”. In addition, I have, for the first time, explicitly used male pronounces in the lyrics when addressing complexities and ambivalences of romantic relationships.
There is a confessional aspect to this body of work, which for me links to how seemingly confined and limited-resources spaces empower creativity. The bedroom-like and not-so-professional studio I set up for myself when working on this EP ultimately served as a safe space for experimentation and self-expression, similarly to how one might let loose inhibitions in the privacy of their bedroom. I was able to be more exposed and fragile – and less self-conscious – when sketching musical ideas, whilst also less inclined to edit my recorded takes and arrangements as I freed myself from having to align with certain recording and production conventions. The result still feels edited and at times restraint, but for me it constitutes a sense of spontaneity that I have not explored as such in my previous works.
Being a “bedroom producer” can admittedly be a rather isolating endeavour, and so it is perhaps not surprising that many works of electronic music producers operating in non-professional and non-commercial settings are preoccupied with notions of intimacy (and alienation). Take, for example, internet-born music genres like vaporwave, which proliferated in online communities and have been said to encapsulate paradoxical feelings of connectivity and alienation in a globalised world (Glitsos, 2016). I often find myself in similar, seemingly contradictory position when making music, using my limited toolkit to create contained and “in-the-box” productions that are also concerned with a sort of digitally mediated, comforting feeling. Perhaps it is this ambivalent tension or interplay between distance and intimacy, private and public and amateurish and professional that make up bedroom music production aesthetics – regardless of whether a body of musical work has been produced in a bedroom or not.
Dempsey, D. (2014, March 1). Artist Highlight: Kembra Pfahler. Retrieved from https://www.sfaq.us/2014/03/artist-highlight-kembra-pfahler
Glitsos, L., 2016. Ways of Feeling: The Transformation of Emotional Experience in Music Listening in the Context of Digitisation, Perth: Curtin University.